Christmas Gift Ideas

What Would You Do with a Brain If You Had One?

Chick #1: I gotta read this book for class, and I don’t want to.

Chick #2: Oh, I hate that [stuff]. I hate having to read [stuff] I hate.

Chick #1: I know I don’t want to read it. I don’t get the book, I don’t understand it — it’s stupid

Chick #2: What book you gotta read?

Chick #1: I don’t know, its called, like, Increasin’ Your Brain Power or something.

–E train

Overheard in New York

Maybe words and stuff wouldn’t be so intimidating if she’d grown up playing with the Leonardo da Vinci Action Figure. “Each figure comes with a paintbrush, an easel, a frame and some of his art and sketches to display.” (Via FunctionalAmbivalent, whose readers appear to have already bought this item out.)

Or spent more time in intellectually challenging activities like Reindeer Arm Wrestling. (Via dangerousmeta!.)

From Life Comes Art

DNA11, converting your body’s chemistry into works of art.

The perfect gift for someone who has everything including a big ego. Actually, pretty cool.

Link via kahunaburger.

Christmas Gift Bag#11

From FunctionalAmbivalent, though I assume by now you are already reading Tom each day and don’t need my linkage. Nonetheless, Christmas Gift Bag#11: Giving Good Bobblehead. Turn everyone you know into a bobblehead doll.

Christmas Gift Bag #9

FunctionalAmbivalent thinks a toaster that “allows you to assemble the sandwich and then toast the bread” might lead to some “cheese leakage issues.”

Thinking Tom might be on to something, NewMexiKen is considering acquiring the internet domain cheeseleakageissues.com.

What WOULD They Think?

Lincoln and Washington bobblehead dolls from the National Constitution Center store.

Ins and Outs, Mostly Outs

Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner asks: Would You Fly on an Airplane With No Pilot?. That is, would you fly on a remotely operated airliner?

Called and then showed up at a restaurant Sunday afternoon. Was told in turn by four different people: “definitely open for dinner at 4,” “it’s early, but not a problem,” “I don’t think we’re serving yet, but I’ll check,” (it was no), and “not until five.” C’mon folks, how hard can it be? Maybe they had too many hosts and hostesses and not enough cooks. We went somewhere else.

The photo in the masthead (as this is written) is of my neighbor’s house. Don’t tell him. (It’s the least he could do. He’s left than darn things on all night the last two nights.)

My cockles are still warm from the rock ballet last evening. As my friend Donna said, when she danced you had to be the right size and just so to be in the cast. Now everyone is allowed to perform. Seeing as how it wasn’t exactly the Bolshoi, letting everyone perform is just perfect.

True to form (that’s why I love him) FunctionalAmbivalent found a particularly tacky underwear Christmas gift today.

What I’d really like for Christmas:

Someone to wash all my house windows, inside and out.
Someone to detail my car.

Jeff Bridges is 57 today, Cassandra Wilson 51, Jay-Z 37, and Tyra Banks 33. Bridges has four Oscar nominations, three for supporting actor and one for leading — Starman.